


Consumption

by bad_decisions



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Blood, Exposition, I'm going to be horrible to everyone just warning you now, Lots of plot, M/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, Plot, Resistance, Science, Some Fluff, Suicide, This is only the beginning, Very brief mention of a long-ago suicide, abandoned, just in case, setting the scene as it were, sorry - Freeform, there will be more story than just this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:29:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1428565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bad_decisions/pseuds/bad_decisions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life in Night Vale is just as strange as it ever was.<br/>Strexcorp adds a new threat, yes, but it’s not like the community hasn’t been operating under a dictatorial power for decades already. They’ve got plenty of practice with coded communication.<br/>They just have to use their channels to organize a resistance and figure out the enemy’s weaknesses. While Strexcorp threatens and drugs anyone they think is involved in unauthorized sedition. And learns and settles in and spreads its influence. And generally does all the things a conquering power with unlimited resources and no morals should do if it wants to stay in power.<br/>A lot of people haven’t yet realized just how hard that’s going to be.<br/>And, to be irritatingly cliché, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If a link in the chain is secretly working for whatever is trying to break the chain, and knows secrets integral to the functioning of the chain, which – okay, this metaphor’s not working.<br/>One traitor. That’s all Strexcorp needs.<br/>If one person caves, the barely-conceived rebellion will never even be born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consumption

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this goes AU from the end of episode 42 (Numbers). I am incorporating some elements from later episodes (e.g. Janice and the Girl Scouts), but I’m messing with the timelines and picking and choosing what fits and what doesn’t. Creative license yo.  
> Also, I haven’t listened to Condos yet, so forgive me any possible continuity errors surrounding that.  
> I flagrantly indulge in a lot of personal headcanons here, some of which contradict other very popular ones.

_He never could quite describe pain in words, but he never stopped trying. It was an interesting phenomenon, full of poetry in the way so many raw, fundamental things are._

_It was in no way an easy task. Pain tends to be distracting like that. It was difficult to come up with good words while a good part of your concentration was consumed by incandescent agony._

_Even without adequate descriptions of previous pain to use as comparison, this is the worst pain he has ever felt._

_It is physical, yes. Oh, that is part of it. He can’t breathe. It feels like his brain is being shredded from the inside. He isn’t even able to scream, which sometimes helps take his mind off things._

_Worse than that, though, is the pain of betrayal. His heart aches as he sobs quietly, each shuddering breath driving new daggers of pain through his body. What he has lost – no, it had never been his._

_But he has lost things other than that._

_He has lost everything._

_They have won, they have taken it all; everything he has ever cared for, fought so hard for, it is all destroyed or brought to heel at their feet._

_Words will never describe the pain, and now is a bad time for trying._

***

Science in Night Vale could be infuriating or invigorating. Right now, it was a bit of both.

It was common knowledge that the sky in Night Vale regularly changed colour, just as much as it was common knowledge outside of Night Vale was blue.

One of Carlos’s pet projects at the moment was trying to figure out why this was (though really, anything he did here could be classed a ‘pet project’; no one sane would ever publish any of his findings). He’d asked around town first, but hadn’t found anything useful. Few people seemed to even know that a changing sky was unusual.

So Carlos had hit the lab.

It is a universal phenomenon, however, and no more anywhere than Night Vale, that game-changing information will not be found through anything resembling hard work. Rather, it will arrive by accident, and usually at a very inconvenient time.

An inconvenient time such as, for instance, the middle of a date with one’s boyfriend.

Carlos had invited Cecil over to the lab to show him the basics of atomic spectra. It was a topic Carlos had particularly loved learning about, and he thought Cecil might appreciate how elements could be identified simply by looking at them through a piece of plastic.

Only it hadn’t worked right. None of the lines they saw matched anything near the right colour or configuration for any of Carlos’ samples. He’d run them through the spectrometer – a machine he actually hadn’t bothered to use since arriving in Night Vale – and got the same nonsensical results.

After about half an hour of messing around with equipment, Carlos had given up, apologized for the botched date, and suggested they go out for dinner.

Cecil had laughed, waved off the apology, and said that sounded neat. He’d added that he could see what things were made of without equipment, if Carlos needed any help identifying something.

It was now dawn of the morning after the date, and Carlos hadn’t slept. He’d spent all night in the lab, testing and retesting samples of every gas he could get his hands on. He was running on coffee and adrenalin at this point, the mental thrill that only discovery gave him. In his younger years, he’d have been shouting about whatever he’d learned to whoever would listen right about now. Thank god he was past that phase now.

And he was pretty sure he’d cracked it.

He should probably bounce his theory off someone before he went any further with it, though. It had become standard practice among his team within weeks of arriving in Night Vale. They’d realised pretty quick that they could not trust everything they saw, but it took them longer to notice that many other observations, including the readings on theoretically unbiased equipment, sometimes changed dramatically depending on who recorded them.

Cal was the only other person there, doing tests on some substance she was pretty sure underwent chemical changes at the moment of sunrise. She hadn’t properly explained yet. The other members of the team were asleep or out collecting data.

“Cal, you busy? I think I’ve figured out why the sky keeps changing colour. Can I run it by you?”

She nodded, eyes not moving from her titration, “Talk.”

“The quantized energy levels of the atmospheric gases are changing!” Okay, maybe not completely past it.

Cal made a noise of irritation. “Not a quantum physicist, malakas.” She’d been up for a couple of hours, and was decidedly not on a high of discovery.

“Right. Sorry. Basically, electron shells have energy values associated with them. Atoms emit light when they’re energized because the electrons are absorbing the energy, jumping up levels, and then releasing the energy as photons when they fall back down. The precise frequencies of the light released depend on the element and the number of levels the electron travels.

“Atoms can also absorb light. If the photons are of exactly the right energy to cause an electron to jump, then that exact frequency of light will be absorbed when white light is shone through a cloud of that element in a gaseous state, and the rest of the light will keep going. The absorbed frequency –”

Carlos was cut off by a shattering sound and several Greek expletives.

Cal’s flask had exploded, slicing her palm open and spraying the bench with whatever had been in it.

“Skata! Oh, gamo to theo!”

She had left the mess of broken glass and was rooting through their (extensive and containing many unconventional additions) first aid kit for bandages. Something black was dripping onto the floor, but whether it was from Cal’s wound or her ruined experiment, Carlos couldn’t tell.

He moved to help. “Here, let me –”

“No! No, I can do it. I’m fine. Keep talking. I think you’re onto something; don’t let it get away.” Cal was cleaning her wounds as she spoke.

“Are you sure you’re –”

“Yes, yes. You were saying about atoms absorbing light?”

Carlos paused, worried, but decided to respect Cal’s decision.

“Okay – um, hold on. The – the rest of the light will keep going. Was that where I was?” She _hmm_ ed in assent, now wrapping bandages. “Okay. So the rest of the light keeps going. The absorbed frequency is released when the electron falls back down, but in any direction, so it’s scattered. That’s why the sky is blue in the rest of the world; the gases in the atmosphere scatter that exact frequency of blue light.

“The energy levels are fixed. Nothing changes them. _Nothing_.” Carlos had to stop and breathe for a moment. “But if they were to change, then the frequency of light scattered would change, and the sky would appear a different colour. That’s what I think is happening here. Every night, I’m thinking at about midnight, the energy levels of the atoms in the atmosphere are changing. Which _should not be possible_. But everything I’ve observed so far backs it up. Standard questions: is it worth pursuing, have you noticed anything which might invalidate it, should I ask the rest of the team?”

Cal finished her dressing and tied it off with her teeth. She thought for a moment, then said, “Pursue. Run it by the rest when they get their lazy arses out of bed, see what they think, but I reckon yes.”

“Thanks, Cal. What was in that flask, anyway?” Now he’d got his idea out, his brain was calming down and he felt capable of normal (for him) conversation. His body was starting to feel heavy and clumsy, so he sat down on the tiled floor. The lack of sleep was catching up.

Cal joined him on the floor, leaning against the base of her fume cupboard. “Bloodstones.”

Carlos turned to gape at her. “No way!”

The team had been wanting to figure out Night Vale’s bloodstones from the moment they found out about them, but unfortunately for them the town had been determined to protect its secrets (or possibly deities or idols; whatever the bloodstones were to them), and no scientist had been able to so much as look at a bloodstone alone. The one exception and the closest they’d gotten to any actual information was Carlos; whenever he’d visited the radio station (and Cecil), he’d had to bleed on the bloodstone door before it would let him out.

“I’m kidding, Carlos.” He deflated. “It was a powdered sample of tarmac. Jake’s working on the roads again, and he asked me for help. I’ve done as much as I can stand to do on all my analysis stuff for now, so I said sure. It’s nice to actually be trying to figure something out for once, rather than just ‘oh I wonder what the chemical composition of this is’. It’s interesting, but I just fancied a change of pace, you know?

“No,” she continued, “there weren’t any bloodstones in the flask. Probably would have been, only I didn’t want to start on them ahead of the rest of the team. They’re all still in that box.” She pointed.

“Are you serious this time?” She grinned, and Carlos swatted her on the shoulder. “Calypso, you genius! Where did you even get them?”

She shrugged, still smiling. “Lot of them being chucked out since the Strexcorp ban. I had to go dumpster diving though; why do you think I was in such a bad mood?”

Carlos yawned expansively. “We still don’t – know how – how – shit, I had something to say. I can’t remember… it now…” he trailed off, blinking. “I think I need to go to bed. Say hi to everyone. I’ll see you later.”

“Good idea,” Cal said. “Sleep well.”

He flopped his way into something vaguely resembling upright, and shambled towards the door, leaning against benches and chair backs for support.

 

Carlos had never been more grateful to have an apartment so close to the lab than now, as he walked through the dark (or sometimes glowing) streets, trying to hold his eyes open.

It took him three minutes to get the key into the door. He fumbled it open, and didn’t bother to lock it after himself as he shed layers of clothing on his way to the bedroom.

The bed made a small scream of protest as he flopped down onto it with a little more force than it thought was really necessary. He’d gotten used to it, though. Carlos didn’t even wait for the wriggling to subside before he was asleep.

***

Ever since Strexcorp had arrived in Night Vale, Carlos made a point never to miss one of Cecil’s broadcasts. For a long time before that – he couldn’t tell you exactly how long – he’d recorded them when he couldn’t listen to them live, but now he caught every single one as it aired.

You never knew when the new Station Management might decide to retroactively censor something Cecil said. More importantly, Carlos needed to know when Cecil was going to need him to be there at the end of the show.

More and more often, now, Cecil was coming home drained, angry, and hopeless. Strexcorp was coming down hard on him, and he was having to get ever more cunning to get what he wanted to say around their censors. Strexcorp was taking over his home, controlling and threatening everything he loved, and he couldn’t _do_ anything about it further than he was already doing without risking still more.

So yes, drained. Angry. And most of all, hopeless.

Carlos’s alarm clock, come hell or high water (and he should probably find a new phrasing for that, because portals suddenly opening to hellish dimensions were really not a big thing in Night Vale), was set to go off at the start of Cecil’s show. The radio that had come with his apartment always turned itself on anyway, but sometimes he needed the added incentive of the alarm racing about the bedroom, shrieking polyglottal profanities it had probably learned from Cal and oozing something as-yet-unidentified, to pull himself from dreams where science actually made sense and evil corporations weren’t trying to drug his boyfriend into compliance.

Today the clock had chosen ‘go fuck yourself’ as its refrain. It was gleefully screeching this in alternating Spanish and something like Cantonese as Carlos careened around the room trying to catch it. It was an unsurprisingly effective technique of waking up.

By the time Carlos had pinned down the little menace, the radio had begun to play the intro music. He methodically pulverized the clock with a hammer (it would be whole again within the hour) while he waited for Cecil to begin.

***

**_A bird in the hand is not worth the trouble._ **

**_Welcome to Night Vale._ **

**_The City Council today announced that they were removing all legal restrictions on writing implements. The announcement was made through a chain of representatives, culminating in a proxy standing at the podium usually filled by the entire Council speaking in unison._ **

**_Controversy is rife over this decision, with many recalling the untold dangers of such tools, and others questioning the sense of such a decision, given that we could not consult our bloodstone circles for guidance._ **

**_What do you think about this bold move, listeners? Write in – with your newly legal pens and pencils – and tell us your stance on the current political climate._ **

**_In other news, reports are coming in from all over Night Vale of malfunctioning tap water. People have described it as tasting ‘sickly’, ‘triangular’, and ‘motivational’, and anecdotal evidence suggests that it has become corrosive to tentacles and Wi-Fi signals. Station Management has advised me that they have dispatched a team of Strex scientists to assess the situation, and that I need not distract Carlos and his team from their work._ **

**_More on this story as it develops._ **

**_The Night Vale PTA…_ **

***

Cecil was fine. He was totally fine. There was nothing worrying him, nothing upsetting him, and nothing sapping his will to keep trying against insurmountable odds. There were no insurmountable odds, and nothing he was trying to do in their non-existent face.

In other news, his denial skills were getting a real work out.

***

**_… on May 10 th. Don’t forget! Or do. I mean, it’s not up to me to tell you how to live your life. _ **

**_Imagine a virus._ **

**_Imagine it reproducing inside your body, guileful, insidious, ruthless, destroying your cells as it multiplies and spreads. Your body’s defenses have never faced an invasion of this kind or this magnitude, and many victories come to the virus before your immune system even realises it is under attack. Your leukocytes are unprepared and untrained, what futile attempts at defense you can muster coming too late and falling before the enemy._ **

**_Imagine the virus infecting your flesh, your very embodiment and expression of self, and taking control of its functions, using and abusing and repurposing them for its own ends, until you are utterly at its mercy._ **

**_The virus owns you, weakens you, prevents you from doing many things that you once did often.  It forces you to stay in isolation, at the constant threat of transmission, of it spreading and polluting your loved ones._ **

**_The virus does not kill you. Once you are subjugated, it merely keeps you there. Your will, your capacity for thought, immobilized in yellow coils of fatigue. Feeding off you like a parasite. Taking anything and everything that is not absolutely necessary for the survival of its host._ **

**_But it’s forgotten your leukocytes._ **

**_The virus destroyed and repurposed the garrison, yes, but the garrison was already insufficient and declining._ **

**_New white cells come, rebuilding their forces in forgotten corners and dark places the virus dare not enter._ **

**_They congregate, they whisper, and they organize._ **

**_They gather intelligence of their own, first by observation of their adversary, then infiltration, then interrogation._ **

**_They learn._ **

**_They grow._ **

**_They do not give in._ **

**_This has already begun, if you look._ **

**_One day soon they will be ready, and the drums of war will thunder, calling every cell to fight to repel the invaders. The battle will not be jubilant, or glorious, or without cost. It may not even be won. But it is the only alternative to subjection, and that is no choice at all._ **

**_Imagine a virus._ **

**_Imagine no virus._ **

**_Imagine._ **

**_This has been Community Health Tips._ **

**_The tap water has now…_ **

***

All across Night Vale, people listened to Cecil’s show.

Teddy Williams played it on the PA system, for people to listen to while they bowled.

Families gathered around their home radios after dinner, curling up on sofas and sharing a time of quiet togetherness, cushioned by the rich tones emanating from the speakers.

Carlos’s team of scientists recorded the show, and would listen to it individually, working late at night on experiments that did not make sense.

Some people did not know, and just listened to the words, taking from them whatever apparent meaning they would.

Others knew, and when they listened, they _heard_.

Deep in the abandoned subway, huddled around a windup radio, a small group of children shivered, hearing.

Out in the desert, planning a camping trip for her troop, a scoutmistress smiled, hearing.

In a location known only to her, a young girl set her jaw, and found her courage renewed, hearing.

And what they heard, those who knew what to look for, how to decode Cecil’s metaphors and read between the lines of what he could not say, was that there was hope.

***

**_… And on that note, dear listeners, I bid you farewell._ **

**_Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight._ **

***

**March 6 th 2014**

**19:51**

**From Carlos**

**I’ve got to meet with the team now, but I’ll be done by 9. Want to do something?**

**March 6 th 2014**

**19:58**

**To Carlos**

**Night in at my place. I’ll get food.**

***

The scientists always had a meeting at 8pm on Thursday. Given their vastly differing schedules, they often didn’t see each other all at once at any other time. 8pm had been chosen as a good neutral point to tell the others whatever needed to be said, because everyone tended to be awake and usually nothing scientifically urgent was happening. Thursday had been chosen because, given the convenience of the time, team members tended to be occupied with their social lives on other days.

Once everyone was there – except Ciro, who was spending the week at the seismic monitoring station – Cal called them to order.

“Right, does anyone have anything they need to say?”

Jake grunted. “The roads are still moving. Tell me if you see anything.”

Talus nudged Eleana, who said, “Does anyone have any spare rope? We need to get deeper into the Whispering Forest, and we’ve run out of safety line.”

Ashling volunteered her supply.

Carlos raised his hand, “I’m going to be sleeping days now. I think I’ve cracked why the sky changes colour here, but I’m going to need to work nights to confirm it. My working hypothesis is–”

“Cal told us,” Ashling said. “I don’t think anyone has any negating arguments, do they?” She looked around. The scientists all shook their heads.

“Some of us have been doing experiments with the bloodstones already,” Cal told Carlos. “But,” she addressed the table, “most of how they work seems to be in how they’re used, so if anyone finds an instruction manual, that’d be great.”

“Is that everything? Great. Good. Got to go, the roads stand still for no man!” The door banged shut behind Jake as he positively fled the room. The meeting was unofficially adjourned, and everyone began to separate out and go their respective ways.

Cal shared a glance with Carlos. “Do you ever wonder how any of us are going to manage when we leave? Jake used to be Doctor Jaakobah Smith, PHD. Now he’s gone batshit. We’re all going batshit. This town is driving us all insane.” She laughed. “Science doesn’t fucking work here, and I’ve still got experiments to do. And you, I think, have a date?” She waggled her eyebrows at a blushing Carlos, and maneuvered him out the door.

***

**March 6 th 2014**

**20:15**

**To Cecil**

**Meeting over much quicker than anticipated. Should I come over now?**

**March 6 th 2014**

**20:17**

**From Cecil**

**Please do.**

***

Cecil enveloped Carlos in a hug as soon as he was through the door. They clung to each other wordlessly for a long moment, sharing support and love and reassurance, each reminding himself that no matter what else changed in his life, he could always trust in the other.

“Any news?” Carlos breathed in Cecil’s ear after a moment.

“They’re drugging the tap water. I don’t know if you picked that up. And I’m pretty sure they’ve taken control of the City Council,” Cecil murmured back, face buried in Carlos’s perfect hair. “Ko’s trying to contact Tamika, get some of her girls involved in her militia. We’ve started a blog for Steve Carlsberg. The URL will be in the broadcast tomorrow.”

“We watching or talking?”

“Talking.”

They broke apart, Carlos briefly stroking Cecil’s face. “How was your day?” He asked at normal volume.

“Fine, fine,” Cecil chirped, pulling Carlos along by the hand, “I thought we’d watch a movie while we eat. How was Science?”

“Science was good. I think I’m on my way to figuring out why the sky changes colour – the scientific explanation, not the one Old Woman Josie gave me regarding Elder Gods. I’ll explain it to you later, if you like, but my brain’s had enough of science for one day.” Keeping up the charade of innocence got hard for Carlos sometimes, but he knew it was worse for Cecil. Cecil never got to let it down, and he still had to somehow get messages out around it. These days, Carlos could hear the constant note of stress under Cecil’s chipper mask. He made a face he hoped conveyed sympathy, but probably just looked like he’d come down with a case of throat spiders.

Cecil bent down and kissed Carlos. “I’d love that. I agree, though, later. We’re both tired. I’ll check if the food is ready, you pick something on Netflix.”

Carlos flicked through the options, looking for something noisy and not too plot-oriented. They needed something loud enough to cover whatever conversation they were going to have, and that they could watch when they weren’t talking without needing to know what had happened half an hour ago.

Documentaries were usually good for this. Carlos toyed with one on felids, but decided it would be too quiet and too potentially destabilizing of Cecil’s worldview (he was eventually going to have to explain to Cecil that normal cats didn’t have tentacles, but that could wait until they weren’t under constant threat of whatever Strexcorp was actually threatening them with). He eventually settled on a feature about cryptography during WWII, which promised lots of dramatic music and beeping noises and possibly some useful information.

Cecil had made chili, but it wasn’t going to be ready for at least another half an hour, so they settled in to start watching.

Cecil sprawled diagonally across part of the sofa, and Carlos lay with his head in Cecil’s lap after placing his glasses on the coffee table. Within moments, Cecil was stroking his fingers through Carlos’s hair. Carlos chuckled, and Cecil looked down at him, smiling coyly.

The smile slipped away when he remembered what he’d had to tell Carlos.

“Strexcorp has bought the Boy Scouts, and Ko tells me they’re closing the deal on the Girl Scouts, too. I’m not supposed to mention it on air. They won’t tell me why, but it’s obviously because they don’t want Tamika to know they’ve got records on nearly all her soldiers now. They’re taking control of our children, Carlos! I don’t know what to do. How do I warn them?”

Carlos gripped Cecil’s hand tightly. “It’s going to be okay. Can Ko let some of her scouts know? They could spread the word. And isn’t Ko preparing a safe house? So they can all go to ground if they’re in danger. You don’t have to worry about them.”

Cecil shook his head. “The scoutmaster that replaced Earl is a complete –” he made an inhuman hissing noise. “Thinks he can stick it out, fight them off or something. The Boy Scouts won’t go into hiding, and there’ll be those among them who could spill the beans on the Girl Scout safe house if they were pushed.

“Her scouts are spreading the word as we speak, but it’s so very dangerous. And there’s a chance the information may not reach where it’s needed in time. If it –” There was a sudden clunk and a fading hum, and all the electronics in the room turned off. Cecil changed tack with speed born of a lifetime’s practice. “Oh, darn it. Power’s out. Anyway, Carlos, I was just about to ask: you don’t need glasses, so why do you wear them? I’ve always wondered; don’t know why I’ve never asked you before.”

Carlos shrank away inside. Of all the topics to jump on, why did it have to be _that_? Still, he had to answer. They had an audience now. And he was a hopeless on the spot liar, so the truth it’d have to be. It was probably about time he’d told Cecil anyway.

“I, uh. When I was in high school. My best friend, he – he killed himself.”

Cecil gave a small gasp of horror. “I shouldn’t have – Carlos, I’m sorry, that was a – you don’t have to –”

“No, no, it’s fine. It was a long time ago now, anyway. I still miss him, and it never really goes away, but you learn to live with it after a while.

“His name was – it was – I don’t actually remember anymore. I don’t remember his name, Cecil.” Carlos froze for a second, mouth open sadly, mentally shook himself, and continued, “But he wore glasses. All the time. Never once saw him without them, until I found his – until I found – I found him. After he’d – you know. Done it. At the funeral, I asked his parents if I could keep his glasses. I got the lenses replaced with plain glass, so I’d be able to look through them without messing up my vision, and I’ve been wearing them ever since. I wear them because it’s like he’s always with me, seeing the same things I am, looking with the same eyes. It’s stupid, I don’t know, but it – it’s a way of remembering him, I guess.”

“I understand. I’m sorry for bringing it up, but thank you for telling me.”

They lay in silence, curled up on the couch, both thinking first of friends they had lost, then of other things, for some time.

Carlos had to excuse himself after a couple of hours so that he could get to the lab. Cecil wished him luck, and wandered off to bed.

***

Steve Carlsberg wasn’t real. Carlos remembered when Cecil had first told him this precious town secret. He remembered laughing, and asking Cecil if his vendetta against Steve had not progressed too far, given that he was now denying the very existence of the man.

Cecil had eventually convinced Carlos that he was telling the truth.

On town record, Steve Carlsberg was very definitely a thing. He paid taxes, he worked as groundskeeper for the Dog Park, he was married, he had a daughter, he owned a house and a car and a fax machine.

In reality, Steve Carlsberg did not exist and never had existed. He was a carefully crafted and maintained front for all the things that Cecil and other community leaders would never otherwise be able to say.

If Cecil could not say something outright, one of the ways he could use to get the information out to the public was to report it in the guise of one of Steve Carlsberg’s ‘conspiracy theories’, which he would then vehemently refute. Those listening would then know whatever it was Cecil had wanted to tell them, and none of the old (read: pre-Strexcorp takeover) power structures could complain.

Everything Cecil mentioned about Steve, from his tan corolla to his bad taste in shoes, had some kind of coded signal or message in it. Even the comma-laden minutes ‘Steve’ took at Night Vale PTA meetings contained hidden information. (Steve Carlsberg had married Cecil’s sister Ko so that he could plausibly get in to said PTA meetings. Ko’s daughter, Janice, had been conceived when her parthenogenesis mechanism was accidentally triggered during reeducation.)

And Steve Carlsberg had been only the tip of an iceberg which, once Carlos was made aware of parts of it, he could tell extended for miles. The community and the governing powers had existed in a dichotomy of pretense. The community pretended it was powerless and ignorant, and that it went blindly along with the totalitarian regime, and the Sheriff’s Secret Police pretended they didn’t know about all the ways the people of Night Vale found to carry on doing whatever they liked.

It was an odd system, but it nevertheless worked. Everyone was happy.

Until Strexcorp came, and everything was turned on its head.

Strexcorp didn’t know most of the iceberg existed, and it refused to ignore the parts of it that it could see. It wanted control to a level that made the old system look like a hippy commune.

The delicate balance, between the officials who liked to think they held power and the people of the town who really did, collapsed.

Most of the older residents of Night Vale hadn’t yet accepted that Strexcorp was any different from the authoritarian government they’d happily existed under their whole lives. Every changeover was difficult, they reasoned, but soon Strexcorp would learn, and they’d all get on with their business.

They were wrong.

In any other town, that would be it. The adults would blind themselves to the truth, and the children would lack the ability to act on what they saw.

Only this was Night Vale, and the people of Night Vale were trained from early childhood in such areas as insurgency tactics, cryptography, and advanced knife-fighting.

So the children, lead by Tamika Flynn, had started the resistance. It was poorly organized as yet, a rebellion still in its infancy.

Cecil was part of it. Not a big part. His ability for spreading information was too valuable for him to risk his job by getting involved in other aspects of the resistance.

All the complicated networks for secret communication were still in place, and only needed to be adapted to suit this new purpose.

Carlos just had to believe that a child army, a scientist, a scoutmistress, and a radio host would be enough to take on a conglomeration of unknown but massively extensive power, influence and resources.

And he’d best stop thinking about that now, or he’d start to doubt they could.

***

A man in a suit, his face shadowed, flipped through a printout.

“Move the schedule up. Tell the Marighela team to prepare their subject. We can’t afford to waste any more time looking for Flynn.”

The woman nodded. “And you’ll –”

“I’ll let him know to be ready.”

Light glanced off his hair as he shifted to shake her hand.

Dark, perfect hair, with a dignified, if premature, touch of gray at the temples.

***

The next few days passed largely unmemorably.

Ko returned from her recon trip, and let Cecil know that she now had somewhere to run. She still hadn’t heard from Tamika Flynn, but some of her scouts were part of the militia and in the process of communicating with their leader.

Carlos surreptitiously took as much food as he could to those of Tamika’s army who were hiding in the subway tunnels. Most of the soldiers were still living at home and going about their lives, but some, like Tamika herself, had attracted too much unwanted attention and had to go underground.

Cecil said as much as he dared on the radio, and Steve Carlsberg said a bit more.

Whispers slowly continued to spread.

***

Unless there was something urgent he needed to report, Cecil never worked on Sundays. Carlos, at Cecil’s insistence that he couldn’t do science _all the time_ , usually took Sundays off too.

This particular Sunday, they were having a picnic together in Mission Grove Park.

By common agreement, Carlos had no science equipment with him, and Cecil had nothing he could use to broadcast a signal.

This turned out to be a mistake when the Town Hall exploded.

***

It all happened very suddenly.

Different courses were enacted almost simultaneously, giving people no time to react usefully before they too were hit.

***

It started, no more than a handful of seconds before everything else, with the websites crashing.

Any website that had been used to disseminate unauthorized information displayed nothing but error messages when accessed.

Few people even noticed, and those that did had barely enough time to feel a vague sense of dread before they were otherwise occupied.

Pamela Winchell was shot in the head by a sniper, halfway through one of her frequent press conferences.

Screams echoed from the Subway entrances, but no living creatures followed them out.

A squadron of soldiers in tinfoil hats surrounded a meeting of the Night Vale PTA.

Children across town were subdued and taken captive. Most escaped, but by no means all.

The Town Hall, Steve Carlsberg’s house, and The Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex were bombed.

There was no chaos. It was not a battle. No one had a chance to fight back.

It was a carefully planned, faultlessly executed rout.

***

Most else of what happened would only be catalogued after the fact.

Some would never be fully known or understood, the only witnesses dead ones.

***

Surprise had not yet had a chance to process into horror when something hit Cecil hard across the back of the head and all coherent thought fractured.

He was vaguely aware of movement and sound, but only insofar as it made his head stab with pain.

A hand gripped his hair and raised his head from the ground.

A second blow came, this one to his throat, crushing his voice box.

He drew breath with difficulty, choking on his own blood.

His eyelids fluttered weakly, and he saw the blurred outline of a face against the red sky.

The outlines on his arms shifted, reacting to danger, but he didn’t have the energy to manifest them.

There was a thudding noise, growing louder and closer and more painful as time passed.

Cecil did not know how much time.

He opened his third eye, the concentration required nearly beyond him, and the face resolved into one he recognized. Carlos’s face. One of Carlos's eyes was red. His brain didn’t have the capacity to make sense of the presenting information, so he gave up, shut his eye, and focused on breathing.

Turning, beating blades.

A thump of landing.

Hands gripped his arms, hauling him up.

He was moving. Sideways, maybe.

More hands, passing him along.

The prick of a needle in his arm.

Black fog was spreading on the edges of his thoughts.

He was moving upwards now.

He opened his eye once more.

Carlos stood on the ground, calmly watching the helicopter take Cecil away.

A trickle of red ran from his right eye.

From somewhere far away, Cecil thought he heard a canary singing.

Then the blackness consumed him, and he passed out.


End file.
